Students’ Perception of the Teaching of Historical Thinking Skills

History is a compulsory subject for all Malaysian secondary school students. History teaching and learning processes focus on historical thinking skills such as chronology, exploring evidence, making interpretations,imagination, and rationalizing. Competency in historical thinking skills enables students to think critically and creatively, to understand historical criteria, to perceive historical events emphatically, to explore complex and abstract ideas, and to appreciate ways historians construct past events using evidence to establish historical significance. A study on students’ perceptions of the teaching of historical thinking skills in the subject was conducted in two secondary schools in Miri, Sarawak. The participants were 80 Form Four Science and Arts stream students. The findings showed students’ perception of the teaching of historical thinking skills range from moderate to moderately high level. The result also showed no significant difference in perception between male and female students on all four historical thinking skills (chronology, exploring evidence, interpretation,and imagination). However, on the skill of rationalizing, male students showed a more positive perception (mean=3.85) compared to female students (mean=3.63). In addition, the t-test showed no significant difference in perception between Science and Arts stream students on four aspects of historical thinking skills (chronology, interpretations, imagination, and rationalizing). On the skill of exploring evidence, Arts students showed a more positive perception (mean=4.16) compared to Science students (mean=3.64). The implication of this study is that history teachers need to equip themselves with historical thinking skills so that the process of teaching and learning can be more effective which in turn could help enhance students’ acquisition of historical thinking skills.